Why we said no to streaming games

Friday

Jan 10, 2014 at 2:29 AM

On Monday night, Dec. 30, 2013, I drove in to work about 7:30 p.m. after a dinner recess. As I turned onto Park Street off Dixie Drive, I noticed all of the cars parked everywhere, lining streets all around Asheboro High School and beyond. They were there for the final segment of The Courier-Tribune’s 2013 Christmas Invitational.

On Monday night, Dec. 30, 2013, I drove in to work about 7:30 p.m. after a dinner recess. As I turned onto Park Street off Dixie Drive, I noticed all of the cars parked everywhere, lining streets all around Asheboro High School and beyond. They were there for the final segment of The Courier-Tribune’s 2013 Christmas Invitational.

At the next stoplight, a teenage boy in winter garb with a similarly-dressed teenage girl’s arm hooked around his turned the corner toward the school. It hit me then that, over the years, this tournament has blossomed from a basketball event into a place to be.

That was a wondrous revelation.

The tournament just finished its 23rd year, initiated by Sports Editor Dennis Garcia, who still runs the show, along with whomever is the Asheboro High School athletic director.

The idea for the event came to Dennis in an odd place — while watching a big brawl take place during a holiday gathering of local teams in an attempt at a scaled-down version of a similar sort of tournament. There was no security in place that night back in the early ’90s, and as players and fans went at it, Dennis thought, if it was run right, a tournament in Randolph County for Randolph County teams could work. The hook that could make it even more special would be to donate tournament proceeds back to the schools.

So the next year, he put one together. He ignored advice from others who ran such events and had not only a boys event, but an event for the area’s girls teams, as well. The Christmas Invitational became what it is still today — a three-day, eight-team, 12-game girls tournament before Christmas and a three-day, eight-team, 12-game boys tournament after Christmas.

Sponsors jumped on board when they learned the money would return to the schools. And so, entering this tournament, more than $325,000 has gone back to the local schools, which were five at the beginning but now total seven with the additions of Wheatmore and Providence Grove high schools.

The event has occasionally hit the current annual goal of clearing $16,000 — enough to give $2,000 back to each school. When it gets to that point on a regular basis, the goal will move to $20,000 and $2,500 per school.

Organizing such an event, as you might imagine, involves some heavy lifting.

And it’s not inexpensive to put on, either. Each year, more than $10,000 is spent on referees, security, ticket takers, PA announcers, shot clock keepers, food for the hospitality room, tournament T-shirts, trophies, janitorial services and more. We need a lot of people in place for day and night sessions for six days.

Many of those positions have been filled by the same people. That’s people who, for years and now going on decades, have taken six days out of their holiday schedule to help this event succeed.

Meanwhile, some vendors, like Food Lion and Papa John’s and The Trophy Shop, donate or give us discounts to help keep expenses down.

The event’s title may have The Courier-Tribune in it, but it is truly a community affair.

The point here is we are very proud of this event and what it’s become and how much the community has rallied around it. Naturally, we are also very protective of it, so you can imagine our surprise when we discovered My Randolph Sports was streaming the tournament games live on its website.

When Dennis discovered what was happening, he informed Publisher Diane Winnemuller and me. He was told to tell them to quit streaming the games, and My Randolph Sports complied, though not without throwing

a tantrum of sorts on its website and in its social media platforms.

The focus of the attacks seemed to stem from the fact that we told them they didn’t have permission to stream the games. That is true, but even had they asked, the answer would have been no. Here’s why:

First of all, who would want to donate all the time and effort and resources needed to put on a charitable event, only to have someone else come in and stream it, sell ads to sponsor the streaming and make money off an event that’s counter to the purpose of the event?

That leads to the next problem. Money from every ticket sold goes back to the schools participating in the tournament. So if the games are shown live, for every person who decides to stay at home and watch the game instead of going to see the game in person, that’s a $5 ticket that doesn’t go into the schools’ kitty. If 100 people stay away because the games are live, that’s $500. So we would oppose streaming the games because we believe that action could hurt the tournament.

Just because we’re in little Asheboro, N.C., doesn’t mean local events like this don’t have the same rights as college games or professional events in larger cities and venues. Neither My Randolph Sports nor The Courier-Tribune nor even The Associated Press can go to a pay-per-view boxing match and stream the match live. It’s not permissible to do that with a concert in the Greensboro Coliseum or a Carolina Panthers football game in Charlotte or a Duke-Carolina basketball game.

The reason is simple: The hosting party wants people in the seats, not sitting at home watching on TV or a computer.

When events are shown live on TV, they are acquired through rights fees paid by the network showing the event. No such offer to us was made here.

Finally, not only were we opposed to the streaming, but so was Asheboro High School. Other school officials and ADs also told Dennis they would not allow live streaming at their schools.

I know we’re in a visual age, but if we can’t preserve the integrity and, indeed, the survival of an event, pretty soon, there won’t be an event at all.

The Courier-Tribune Christmas Invitational is too precious to us for us to let that happen.